TOPIC: windows server administration

I'm fairly new to networking and I found this website a tremendous help in understanding basic concepts. I now would like to go more deep into cisco routing and windows 2000/2003 administration and have a few basic questions to get me started:

1. What is the purpose and basic idea of operation behind Active Directory?

2. What is the purpose and basic idea of operation behind IIS?

3. What is WINS and in what case would it be used?

4. Do you recommend purchasing a cisco router to practice for CCNA or I will be fine with Cisco IOS emulator like Boson's emulator?

5. Do you think it makes sense to get Network+ if I'm going for CCNA?

6. Can you recommend any good and easy to understand sites/tutorials on windows server 2003 administration?

7. After reading your subnetting tutorial I went to see configuration of my dlink router and noticed something interesting: my ISP assigned me a class A ip address with a default class C subnet mask. (24.xxx.xxx.xxx with 255.255.255.0). What does this mean and why would they do this?

8. Is there something like a rule of thumb for how many users maximum should be in the same subnet/broadcast domain? What is the frequency of broadcasts on windows machines? Can it be changed and controlled? Does it also depend on what software products are being run on hosts pc (do many programs send broadcast packets?). Has anyone ever done an analysis (perhaps with a graph) of number of users in the same subnet vs. effective network throughput?

3)WINS provides a distributed database for registering and querying dynamic mappings of NetBIOS names for computers and groups used on your network. WINS maps NetBIOS names to IP addresses and was designed to solve the problems arising from NetBIOS name resolution in routed environments.Prior to Windows 2000, all MS-DOS and Windows-based operating systems required the NetBIOS naming interface to support network capabilities.

4)I would strongly recommand to purchase a router if ur pocket allows.You cant perform all practicals on simulator e.g,u cant take a backup of IOS of router on simulator.

5)I would suggest MCSE.

6)The best way is to get a good book(mastering windows server 2003),for tutorials google is the best...

7)255.255.255.0 subnet mask can be given to class A network,when class A network is subnetted

The frequency of broadcasts on windows systems is quite high.. you usually see some form of traffic flying around every 1.5 minutes. I had actually done some research a long time ago on the chattiness of windows 2000 over a 24 hour period. Unfortunately I can't seem to dig up the results right now.

However it should suffice to say that windows is a particularly noisy operating system.

When deciding how many workstations on a particular subnet, the final figure will depend heavily on whether you're talking about a hubbed network or a switched network as well as the traffic requirements of the machines in the subnet.

For example if you're setting up a subnet with an AD server and a couple of high traffic database servers, you may not have much else in the subnet... however if you're setting up a home LAN for your grandmother and her friends to play quake.. you may be able to shove in a whole lot more.